


Cygnet

by Seascribe



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Coming of Age, Daemons, Fusion, Gen, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You <i>are</i> going to settle as something wretched,"  Cottia says, feeling sulky and hopeless and miserable.  "You're probably going to be a--a <i>lizard.</i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cygnet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



Cottia wishes her daemon would never have to settle. She likes climbing trees with Barra fluttering about her head as a sparrow, and afterwards he leans solid and protective against her side as a bear when Nissa scolds them and her little lap-dog daemon yaps shrilly in counterpart. At night, Barra is a fox or a wolf or a shaggy hound, curled up by her side and keeping her warm. She would never say it aloud--although Barra knows, of course he does--but she is afraid, afraid of what she might lose when she grows up and her daemon is trapped forever in one shape. 

"It will be all right," Barra reassures her, and he is a bear again, resting his huge head in her lap and making the boards of her little bed creak. "After all, it happens to everyone." Cottia glares at him. As though that were any comfort at all! "Perhaps I'll settle like this," Barra continued. "Wouldn't Aunt Valaria and Drest love that?" Cottia imagines the expression on her aunt's face, her flighty squirrel daemon chittering in agitation, and grins. 

"As long as you aren't a squirrel, I shan't mind how you settle," Cottia said. "Or a yappy little dog, like Davos." 

Barra snorts derisively, and Cottia giggles, burying her fingers in his thick coarse fur. 

*  
Barra creeps through the hedge as a fox--Cottia always grins a little when he takes that form--trying to get as close as he can without being seen or going too far from Cottia. The centurion and his wolf daemon don't look up, too busy with the old shield and the little wolf cub lying in the dust at their feet. Cottia has heard everything about him, how he has a lame leg and the wolf cub and even an ex-gladiator for a body-slave. But she has never spoken to him before, and she wants to. She goes through the hedge after Barra, not taking any care to be quiet. 

Even so, it is a very long time before the centurion and his daemon notice her. The wolf's hackles rise, and quick as a flash Barra is huge and menacing, wearing his bear shape and half-rising onto his hind legs. The centurion flashes Cottia an apologetic grin. 

"There's no need for that," he says. "You only startled us, that's all. We don't often get visitors bursting through the hedges." 

Cottia had hoped that he would want to be her friend, and when she realises that he has been speaking British to her, she knows that the bond has been forged between them, even if Barra does snicker impolitely at his awful accent. 

*  
The ex-gladiator--Esca--is nothing like Cottia had expected. He makes no more noise than his lynx daemon when he walks across the courtyard and has a stern, unreadable face. Barra, wearing his fox-shape again, scampers over and sniffs boldly at the lynx, ignoring the way she puts back her ears. 

"Come and join us, Esca," Marcus says, shooting Cottia a quick reproving look under his brows. Esca gives him a rather ironic salute and something that might almost have been a smile flickers across his face. 

Sassticca has made honeycakes, and Cottia feeds pieces of hers to Cub and to Marcus' daemon alike, though of course she is careful never to actually touch Alpan. There are some ways that the tribes and Rome hold in common, and that taboo is the greatest of them. Cub grows quickly bored when Cottia runs out of cake, and begins annoying Esca's daemon, bowing and dancing about trying to coax her to play. Cathair grumbles and reaches out to swat him gently on the nose. 

"He is learning bad habits," Esca complains, but he does nothing to call the wolf cub off. 

Barra watches the lynx's bob-tail twitching in the dust, and all of the sudden pounces in a burst of red-gold fur. Esca startles and his daemon hisses, but Barra huffs with laughter, dancing just out of reach until Cathair flashes to her feet and bats him over. Instead of flickering into a bear, like Cottia half-expects, Barra becomes a lynx as well, and then the two daemons are rolling over and over in the dust. 

Alpan is on her feet, her hackles rising, but Cottia says, "Peace, it is only that they are playing." And so they are, though Esca's face is as impassive and stern as ever. Cub dances excited around the two lynx daemons, yipping and crying to be let in to play too, and Barra changes again, a wolf now. He bows and circles, shaking Cub lightly by the scruff of the neck, and Cottia laughs and claps her hands as they race round and round the courtyard. Cathair stalks back to Esca's side and sits down primly, as though she had never been anything but dignified. 

By summer's end, Cottia can count on one hand the number of times that Esca has smiled at her. But it is not strange at all to see their daemons tussling like kittens from time to time while Alpan watches, her pink tongue lolling in a grin.

*  
Cottia hates that Marcus and Esca are leaving and going on an adventure, while she must stay here with only her aunt and the silly Romanised girls that she considers good influences for company, all spring and summer. She rages up and down the garden and Barra bellows and growls his displeasure, changing quick-quick-quick from a bear to a stag to a badger, tearing up clods of grass with his claws and hooves until Nissa grabs Cottia by the ear and drags her to her room. 

It is a long and lonely summer, and to make matters worse, Barra talks more often of settling, and spends less and less of his time as a bear or a fox. 

"You _are_ going to settle as something wretched," Cottia says, feeling sulky and hopeless and miserable. "You're probably going to be a--a _lizard._ "

"I don't think so," Barra says. Right now, he is a robin, and he runs his beak through her hair, chirping comfortingly. "I like having wings." 

"I suppose some sort of bird wouldn't be so bad," Cottia says, and Barra tugs at her hair before fluttering away.

*  
After that, Barra is nearly always a bird, sometimes a falcon or a sparrow or--just to annoy Aunt Valaria--a rooster. But mostly, he is a white swan, and although Cottia thinks he looks very silly waddling around the villa, Aunt Valaria is forever going on about how elegant and lovely he is, and how well that will look for Cottia with her friends. 

"We will have to throw a party to celebrate, now that your daemon has practically settled," Aunt Valaria says. "Surely it will be very soon." Barra opens his enormous wings, knocking a vase off its pedestal, and hisses at her. 

"Really!" the squirrel daemon chitters. "You might try to be a little more decorous." Barra ducks his long, graceful neck, and then lets out a rude honking noise. Cottia bites her knuckle to keep from giggling. 

There is no more talk of throwing a party. 

*  
"Why, Cottia, you have grown up," Marcus says, looking at her wide-eyed. "And your daemon has settled..." Barra opens his great white wings proudly, and Marcus' mouth drops open a little. "Cottia, have you been keeping secrets?" 

"What is this talk of keeping secrets when I have not seen you for nearly a year!" Cottia cries, stung. "And you did not write or send any word at all, so that I did not even know whether you had found your wretched Eagle. Do not talk to me about keeping secrets, Marcus!" 

"Be still, Cottia," Marcus says, holding up his hands. At his feet, Alpan whines. "We did find it, yes. But that is for another time. I meant only--in Rome, if a woman's daemon is a bird, it is because she is a witch, and her daemon can fly as far away from her as it likes. And so I wondered, perhaps, if there were something you had not told me." 

"Of course there is not!" Cottia said. "If I were a witch, do you think I would still be here in Calleva, waiting for you to come home?" 

"Waiting for me?" Marcus asks, as though he can scarce believe that he heard her rightly. "But Cottia, I cannot--" Whatever he is going to say, Cottia knows she does not want to hear it, and she is fiercely grateful to Esca for calling at that moment for Marcus to come quickly. 

It is a letter, an important one, and Cottia cannot stand still as Marcus reads it aloud. Beside her, Barra flaps his wings, ruffling Alpan's fur and stirring up little cyclones in the dust. 

"'I hope that I may be the first to give you the news...'" Marcus trails off, and Cottia feels as though she might burst wide open with the sudden rush of hope that fills her, all hot and aching.

"A new beginning," Marcus says, and but he is speaking only to Esca, it seems, and oh, Cottia cannot bear it, she cannot, but the tears have scarcely started in her eyes before Marcus is reaching out to her, saying, "You did say anywhere, did you not, Cottia sweet?" 

And as Cottia puts her hand in his, Barra stretches out his neck to preen Cathair's fur, and to Cottia's surprise, the lynx daemon begins to purr very softly. _Oh,_ she thinks, as Alpan pads over and noses gently at Barra's wing before licking Cathair's nose. And Cottia understands then how it will be with them, and smiles.


End file.
